Susan Lien Longville

The San Bernardino City Council voted unanimously Monday to approve a new set of building codes to improve fire safety for residents who rebuild homes destroyed or severely damaged in the October and November wildfires. Once the final codes are adopted in a month or so, all rebuilt homes in a designated area will require upgraded windows, fire-resistant roofing, a minimum 5-foot clearance between structures and metal screens on all vents, among other requirements.

The San Bernardino City Council voted Monday to provide $250,000 to help fund the expansion of a for-profit child-care center, despite the angry protests of the city attorney and other opponents. Acting as the city's redevelopment agency, the council voted 4 to 3 to set aside the $250,000 as a guaranty to help Totally Kids Inc. qualify for a $2-million loan.

When Assemblyman John Longville met San Bernardino City Councilwoman Susan Lien at her 1998 inauguration, he just assumed she was one of them -- a conservative. After all, Republican lawmakers lord over San Bernardino County politics. And Longville, a Vietnam War protester who dropped out of college to join Sen. Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign in 1968, is one of the county's most liberal politicians. But he soon learned that she was a kindred spirit.

Venice has the canals. San Francisco has the Golden Gate Bridge. The city of San Bernardino, known primarily for its rail lines and an abandoned Air Force base, is hoping to create its own shimmering landmark -- a network of lakes and streams -- to revitalize the city's beleaguered downtown. The latest version of the plan, unveiled at a community workshop Wednesday, calls for a 47-acre lake, which would displace more than 350 homes, businesses and churches just north of the city's civic center.

A petition drive to ban day-labor centers and bar illegal immigrants from renting apartments in San Bernardino has gathered enough signatures to force a City Council vote on the proposal, potentially setting off another political maelstrom in a Southern California city grappling with immigration issues.

With the Jolly Green Giant a no-show, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger observed "Ag Day," honoring California agriculture, with a speech on the Capitol steps last week. His remarks were perfumed with lines like, "You farmers and we here at the state Capitol, we have a lot in common. We deal a lot with a lot of manure, don't we, huh?" He himself is "very familiar with farming," from his Austrian boyhood, when "I milked the cows.... I went to cut the grass, fed the animals and picked crops."

While Los Angeles has made major strides in retrofitting old masonry buildings, San Bernardino has lagged significantly despite seismologists' warnings that the city of 200,000 is particularly vulnerable. San Bernardino lies between two of the state's most active earthquake faults, the San Andreas and San Jacinto. Moreover, much of the city was built above a huge underground water basin. Experts say this loose soil could liquefy in the event of a massive quake, causing buildings to topple.